"I thought about this when I was about 22 years old," Simmons told The Dallas Morning News. "I was a single mom, and I wanted to do it."

But funds, experience and raising her children delayed that dream for the next 33 years.

Simmons told the Morning News that she forgot her routine during the freestyle portion of the competition and had to make it up as she went, but it didn't derail her experience.

The commercial realtor competed in her first fitness competition at the age of 50. She has won nine of the 20 competitions she has entered and has turned that success into a career of fitness modeling.